Tax Treaty Override - I ljuset av OECD:s utveckling av syftet med skatteavtal

Sammanfattning: Today, the global tax treaty network consists of more than 3,000 tax treaties. One of the primary purposes of tax treaties is to avoid double taxation. By achieving the objective of avoiding double taxation, globalization and international growth are promoted. There is no universal system on how countries look at the relationship between tax treaties entered into and domestic law. It is usually said that there are two different approaches to the relationship between international law and the domestic law, a monistic approach and a dualistic approach. A state with a monistic view considers international treaties and domestic law as two parts operating within the same legal system. A state with a dualist approach, instead, considers international law and domestic law as two separate legal systems applying simultaneously. During the 1980s the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development highlighted a phenomenon which meant that states introduced unilateral domestic legislation in violation of entered tax treaties. In 1989, the OECD released a report, "Tax treaty Override", which described the phenomenon as a problem that threatened the development of the international tax network. If a state is subject to domestic legislation in breach of an entered tax treaty, the state commits an international violation in accordance with the Vienna Convention. In Sweden, there have been a number of legal cases dealing with the subject in the 2000s and two of them will be presented in this work. Sweden's position regarding the view of the tax treaty override is not entirely clear. Since the OECD released the report in 1989, the purpose of tax treaties to counter tax evasion has grown stronger, and today there are those who believe it is legitimate to commit tax treaty override in order to counteract abuse of tax treaties.